All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
We had a health panic in the media at the weekend. ‘Killer disease on rise due to overeating,’ said the Sunday Times. ‘Most liver transplants by 2020 could be linked to over-eating, not alcohol’, chimed in The Observer. ‘Overeating sparks liver disease epidemic among Britons’, announced the Telegraph. Should we worry? Maybe. Dr Quentin Anstee, consultant hepatologist at
At last, David Cameron has won an election. First News, a weekly newspaper for school children, organised a national Junior General Election and surprisingly the PM has romped home with 40 per cent of the vote. The Greens beat both Clegg and Farage, and Miliband managed just 22 per cent of the vote. Running these numbers through the BBC’s
My constituency is one of the SNP’s most coveted prizes. If they win in Midlothian they can win almost anywhere. This is Gladstone’s old seat, where the modern political campaign was born. He wrested it away from the Conservatives in 1880, after a series of stirring speeches on the government’s foreign policy failures. On Thursday
Polling day is nigh upon us and the campaigns are going into overdrive today as the party leaders jump on buses, trains and planes to zoom around as many marginal seats as possible. Nick Clegg is taking the Liberal Democrat battle bus 1,000 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Ed Miliband is continuing to
In the ‘most unpredictable election in a generation’, it’s a fool’s errand to make specific calls. However, it is possible to outline what the political landscape might look like on Friday morning. Throughout election night, there will be an obsession with whether the Conservatives or Labour end up as the largest party, far beyond its actual
‘Don’t Google this’, the doctor ordered. The command – with its authoritarian tone; implied threat (if I did, I’d find out something sinister); distrust in my ability to sift and understand information; suspicion of uncontrollable emotion – would have raised my hackles in any circumstances. As it was, I’d already been shocked by the GP’s telephone speculations and could not reply.
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: Last Saturday the American oil-tank vessel ‘Gulflight’ was torpedoed by a German submarine off Bishop’s Lighthouse. The captain died of shock and two seamen were drowned. Thus the critical event which the American Government foresaw has come to pass. On February 4th the American Government
If Nick Clegg loses in Sheffield Hallam, it would be the Portillo moment of the 2015 election. After several tight polls, a new survey from ICM this evening suggests that the Lib Dem leader might be safe after all. When the names of candidates are prompted, ICM puts Clegg on 42 per cent — seven points ahead of the
In today’s election special podcast, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss whether Nick Clegg will lose his seat in Sheffield, the current state of the seat predictions and the pros and cons of Russell Brand’s endorsement for Ed Miliband. Plus, we look at the latest pronouncements on coalitions and what is set to happen in the final 48
Given that the Bow Group are the oldest Conservative think tank and count Michael Howard, Norman Lamont and Peter Lilley among their former chairmen, it’s safe to presume that the Tories would have thought that they could rely on their endorsement for the election. However, the Telegraph reported earlier today that the think tank, led by its colourful chairman
As well as trying to prepare voters for what may happen after 8 May, David Cameron needs to make sure he has his party on board for the ride after the election, too. The 1922 Committee will need to approve a second coalition, but the hope in the Cameron camp is that this will be
Although one recent poll suggested that the SNP will win every seat in Scotland, there are still a few Liberal Democrat MPs who hope to retain their seats come Thursday. However, although Alistair Carmichael, the Secretary of State for Scotland and Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, winning his seat in 2010 by a majority of nearly
Well, Labour has started on its own mission of framing the post-election legitimacy debate. Responding to the Tory operation to prepare the public for what might happen from 8 May onwards, Ed Miliband’s party is now claiming that David Cameron is determined to stay in Downing Street even if his coalition loses its majority. A
It’s an important discipline when watching elections to remind yourself that political parties are staffed by smart, hardworking people and not – despite occasional impressions to the contrary – complete buffoons. One of those moments came on Sunday, as Ed Miliband stood next to a gaggle of glum-looking supporters in a Hastings car park and
Ed Miliband may have Russell Brand’s endorsement today, but David Cameron has got the royal baby’s. Okay, she’s a little young to vote – but we can read the signs. YouGov research drew a list of 130 names and voting habits and the conclusion? Girls called Charlotte are most likely to vote Tory: There were all sorts of conspiracy
There’s an episode of The New Statesman in which geologists discover that there’s no more oil in the North Sea and the British economy is about to crash; as a result all the parties try their best to lose the election so as not to carry the can for the next five years. Alan B’Stard,
You have to hand it to the royals. The moment their baby is born, a commercial world will be in pursuit: a newborn needs her name protected. So Mr S would like to congratulate whoever hired the mysteriously-named Moniker Privacy Services (which says it “acts as an iron curtain between you and the outside world”) to make
There’ll be satisfaction in the Labour leader’s office today as Russell Brand has done a reverse-ferret and urged his voters to vote and vote Labour. Or, to be more precise, to vote Labour in England—with the exception of Brighton where he wants them to vote Green. He seems to be implicitly urging a vote for
The Guardian’s superb live blog was even better than usual this morning when it covered Twitter’s reaction to the Ed Miliband interview: eight tweets, of which five came from Spectator staff. That’s what I call balance: opinion from the full spectrum of opinion in 22 Old Queen St. We were challenging Miliband’s claim when he said the debt was
Ed Miliband spent a lot of his Today programme interview refusing to answer questions about how a minority Labour government would work because he is focusing both on the ‘big issues’ and on ‘winning a majority’. Both are good things to focus on when the polling stations haven’t yet opened, though of course how a
On the radio this morning, Ed Miliband spoke as if he could get a Queen’s Speech passed without speaking to the SNP. This struck some as implausible, but it sounds right to me. Here’s the transcript:- Q: Well let’s just be absolutely clear… neither you nor any of your colleagues will have any conversations with anybody
Ed Miliband began the first 15 minutes of his NHS day talking about trust and the deficit. In a feisty interview on the Today programme, the Labour leader again did not apologise for borrowing too much when his party was in government. Instead, he argued it was a failure of banking regulation that lead to Britain’s financial
Labour MPs who spoke at Satruday’s sex-segregated rally in Birmingham don’t seem too keen on explaining themselves to The Spectator. Siôn Simon, now a Labour MEP for the West Midlands, proudly tweeted a picture of a Labour rally in Hodge Hill, in which seven Labour representatives spoke at a packed Islamic community centre. Only problem? The
The Tories were less than pleased last week when Danny Alexander revealed confidential communications between the coalition partners regarding child benefit to a paper, as part of an election campaign ambush. The disclosure brought back up old tensions in the coalition, with Michael Gove claiming that it simply served as a reminder of the party’s true colours. ‘I don’t think it
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: The papers of last Saturday published a particularly vivid account by the Canadian Record Officer of the stand of Canadians at Ypres. Such heroism as is revealed in this narrative deserves even more than the tribute we paid to the Canadians last week, Their feat
With polling day less than a week away, it was a case of no rest for the wicked this weekend as politicians took part in some last minute campaigning. While Ed Miliband dreamt about erecting an 8ft 6in stone in Number 10, other members of the Labour party attended a campaign event. Organised by councillor Ansar Ali Khan, Labour
I thought Ed Miliband did rather well in that last debate. Insofar as it matters. In both of the last two debates he’s come across significantly better than much of the press would have you believe, to my mind. Insofar as it matters, again. But then I suspect that almost everyone gleans what they want
In today’s election special podcast, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I attempt to explain why Ed Miliband unveiled a stone engraved with Labour’s six pledges today. Will anyone notice what the pledges are or just discuss the fact they are appearing on a giant stone? We also look at how the stage is set for a last minute Tory
The prospect of government by short-term deals and extortion is so depressing that you can see why Ed Miliband has said he won’t go in for that kind of thing, and why David Cameron and Nick Clegg have finally started laying down some red lines. But there’s no getting away from the electoral mathematics, as
One of Britain’s great traditions is the open garden afternoon: an opportunity for folk revelling in being both middle-aged and nosy (like me) to wander around other people’s plots and peer at what they’ve planted while scoffing large slices of cake. The National Gardens Scheme and Open Squares are two of the most popular, and
The Guardian/Observer website is running with this story headed ‘Britain set to face weeks of political paralysis after election poll’. That’s a safe prediction. But what’s intriguing is that the article – by Daniel Boffey, Toby Helm and Ashley Cowburn – is entirely devoted to the prospect of an extremely shaky Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, harassed or indeed
So, here we are. In 100 hours time, we’ll be half-way through election-day. But at the moment, the polls still remain deadlocked. Yet, there remains a sense that there’ll be some kind of late shift towards the Tories. Is there any grounds for this? Well, I argue in the Mail on Sunday that there are
Ed Miliband has woken up to ridicule this morning after the Guardian unveiled his latest election accessory. No longer content with his trusty lectern, the Labour leader has bizarrely commissioned an 8ft 6in stone inscription which bears Labour’s key election promises. Miliband plans to install this in the Downing Street Rose Garden if he
Ukip has four key target seats in Essex and Kent it hopes to win on Thursday. In order of likelihood of victory, Clacton, Rochester & Strood, South Thanet and Thurrock are the constituencies to watch on election night. I visited three of these seats yesterday, to find out how each of the candidates are feeling about the